8 Mac Minis. Very cool.

Can you tell us how you have your instruments distributed?

And the statement about the Mini's performance vs. G5 2.5 Dual-- remarkable.

Clever setup, btw. Thanks.

@Another User said:

I am hoping to get away with 5 mini's but I can see that escalating quickly.

It really depends which collection you own, how you'd like to split them, how much samples you're planning to use, and if you'll get ADAT or S/PDIF out...

Jerome

Hey Jerome,

thank you very much for sharing all this information, it´s highly appreciated.

M a y a

A quick follow-up.

A friend of mine is installing the same kind of setup at Edward Shearmur's studio, except that he is a Digital Performer user. My friend found a way to make the whole concept work fine with DP, using transformers in Plogue Bidule.

Basically, she made it so that Plogue is getting midi controller information from DP, transforms this info to keyswitches and then sends these to the VI.

She's still at a very early stage of the whole setup, but that looks very promising!

Jerome

I'm very grateful too. Phenomenal detail.

"I highly suggest an external drive or - better - replacing the internal drive yourself with a faster, 7200 rpm, 100GB drive."

1. As you may have replaced eight drives by now (and probably more), I'd like to know which brand you favor and why.

2. I'm trying not to ask the unanswerable "how many instruments do you get out of one Mac Mini?" But... um... how many instruments DO you get out of one Mac mini? Say each instrument is a cross-faded Vienna Instruments legato patch.

3. How do you differentiate the reverb per track? Are you limited to grouping the room effects per each Mini as it's collected back into Logic for mixing?

By the way, "one track equals one instrument" is the only way to fly.

Thanks, Jerome. Your responses are appreciated.

That Friendchip box is an interesting idea, but I don't understand how the M-Audio interface can replace it. The Profire doesn't accept optical S/PDIF as far as I know, right?

Also, how much of that 2GB are you able to access? On a 2GB XP machine you can access just under 1.75GB of samples, which of course is really great. But they're bigger than Mac Minis - although you can stick cheap interfaces on them and get more than two outputs.

Interesting setup. I have a couple of questions Jerome, if you have another generous moment.

First of all, how do you sync the digital signals from the mac mini's? I assume without some sort of clocking, you would have jitter and drifting.

Second, since you are just outputting a stereo pair from each machine, what amount of submixing is going on? just panning or are you running verbs/eq on the mac mini level?

Thanks for the great info!

@Another User said:

By the way, "one track equals one instrument" is the only way to fly.

I agree!!! It's makes much more "musical" sense!

Jerome

@Another User said:

Also, how much of that 2GB are you able to access? On a 2GB XP machine you can access just under 1.75GB of samples, which of course is really great. But they're bigger than Mac Minis - although you can stick cheap interfaces on them and get more than two outputs.

For now, I was able to load up to 1.4GB. I think you can go up to 1.6, but I did not need that much memory yet.

As a general thought, the "slave" concept can work with any computer, Windows or Mac.

However, the idea here was 1/ to get rid of Windows (sorry, we're Mac-biased), 2/ to save space (looots of space), and 3/ to save energy (a Mac Mini consumes only 80W!) - and to do all this at the best cost/power ratio.

Jerome

@Another User said:

Second, since you are just outputting a stereo pair from each machine, what amount of submixing is going on? just panning or are you running verbs/eq on the mac mini level?

As I mentionned in my previous posts, you get one stereo input per Mac Mini into your sequencer. This is why we had to organize the samples by instruments rather than by VI collections.

As a side note, you could probably run verbs/eqs at the Mac Mini level, but I would argue against that. I really think the goal is to dedicate 100% of their power to the VI, to make sure you will never have any performance issue.

Jerome

Quick tip: if you're ever in a situation where you want bounces with fewer files, submix.

[6]

The subtext of my previous post was to wonder whether you wouldn't be better off running XP on those Mac Minis.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

Quick tip: if you're ever in a situation where you want bounces with fewer files, submix.

[6]

The subtext of my previous post was to wonder whether you wouldn't be better off running XP on those Mac Minis.

Within the Logic environment, it's very easy to create aux tracks to bounce only 5 stereo stems (woodwinds, brass, strings, keys, perc, for example).

You can run Windows XP on the Mac Minis, but

1/ I am not sure that the digital I/O will work
2/ You're running Windows XP [6]

But if the digital I/O work and you like Windows, then you should be good to go [:)] Although I don't think you will really get better performances doing so.

Jerome

@Jerome said:

[quote=Nick Batzdorf]Quick tip: if you're ever in a situation where you want bounces with fewer files, submix.

[6]

The subtext of my previous post was to wonder whether you wouldn't be better off running XP on those Mac Minis.

Within the Logic environment, it's very easy to create aux tracks to bounce only 5 stereo stems (woodwinds, brass, strings, keys, perc, for example).

You can run Windows XP on the Mac Minis, but

1/ I am not sure that the digital I/O will work
2/ You're running Windows XP [6]
---------------------------------------
I'll just add to that:
Plus
1. you have to buy the licenses. OSX comes on the macs already.
2. You're running Windows XP [6] [6] [6] [6] [6]

Thanks Jerome. I'm actually somewhat familiar with Logic, and no, I don't particularly like XP. But at this stage the Vienna Instruments player is a little farther along on Windows than it is on PowerPC Macs in my experience (with the exception of memory access, but that's not a factor with a machine that only holds 2GB).

I haven't tried it on an Intel Mac, though, which is why I'm wondering rather than shrieking. [:)] Didn't I read somewhere that the digital I/O can work if you install a generic driver?

Jerome:

No doubt I missed something here, but I can't seem to find where you mention what software you are using to run the VI instruments on the Mac Mini slaves - or if are you using a standalone version of VI on each Mini. I understand the part about routing the output of each Mini into an aux in Logic. (I think one could also treat each Mini as an "External Instrument.") Forgive me if I missed this bit...

Thanks in advance.

We're using Plogue Bidule as a host.

Jerome

Jerome:

Thanks - - that's what I thought. Now all I have to do is learn how to use Plogue Bidule for this purpose...

Nick:

Might I suggest an article in a future issue of your magazine, Virtual Instruments (to which I am a subscriber) with a step by step description of how to use Plogue Bidule as a host for virtual instrument plug-ins. This would be enormously helpful to those dunderheads like myself who are suffering from severe tech overload....

We need to do more about slave machine set-ups in general, I agree.

And you're not a dunderhead, you're asking the same questions we all are.

Second to the article request.

Nick, I'd love to see a piece that starts with one Mac Mini as a slave, a simple ethernet MIDI hookup and a straight-forward use of the Mini's audio out. Then explain what's needed for multiple analog I/O's. Next, tell us what's needed for a single stereo digital I/O, and then onto multiple digital feeds.

For most, the financial reality is an incremental building of a farm. It'd be great if an article could unfold the path before us.

And while I'm requesting, I'd love to read an article called "Anatomy of a Lost Voice: Why Your Instruments Stop Playing." It would be a step-by-step way to diagnose the loss of polyphony, so you'd know what you need to upgrade, or if a second computer is the only answer.

Well has anybody got any experiences to report on the xeon machines?

Miklos.